


Now Forget and be Content

by spaceleviathan



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Frigga Feels, Frigga centric, Gen, Spoilers for Thor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-29
Updated: 2012-11-29
Packaged: 2017-11-19 20:13:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/577208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceleviathan/pseuds/spaceleviathan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She knew she had to be the strong one for Thor, because her husband was engaged enough in convincing himself to believe that he hadn’t just killed their son.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now Forget and be Content

They almost didn’t see her where she stood, stone still as she waited for their return on the steps to the palace. Freezing in place, Thor fell behind the footfalls of his father, who in turn faltered only when he had moved towards her and saw that she did not turn to look at him even upon the call of her name.

She was staring, instead, off into the distance, where the bridge was conspicuously broken, shattered and dull. There, the skies were empty but for the dull shine of far off stars; distant worlds and glittering galaxies, stretching on for forever. Beautiful, but now made putrid by the vivid memory of a despairing child disappearing into the ether.

Frigga was standing straight and tall in her pale dress and golden accents, hands clasped tightly in front of her. The picture of poise, not even her facial expression gave her away, save for the distant eye of the all-seeing which displayed that she watched into further than that which was immediately visible.

Odin tried to climb a step, but a single hand rising from his wife stopped him where he stood. Thor looked to the ground, feeling shallow and lost. The two men had briefly hoped to spare her this: her seeing as they saw when Loki let himself fall, but now, selfishly, both were glad they did not have to answer her when she asked where her son was.

Slowly, finally, her gaze slipped away from the never-ending stars, sliding to her eldest where he fidgeted below her. His shoulders were slump, his expression strained, trying to hold composure for his mother when he knew as she did that he need not. Then to her husband, who watched her with weary eyes, lines etched deep into his face, grooves made deeper by another failure. She held his gaze steadily, perhaps not accusingly, but certainly not warmly. Eyes a familiar green, putting into mind an emerald, sharp and cold, she had shut down from him. She had distanced herself so she could reign herself in; so she would not lash out at him in front of their now only son.

“Thor,” She said, softly, startlingly. “Please.” She held out a hand and waited patiently for him to climb to take it. Standing but a few steps lower, level now with his mother, she reached out her free hand to touch his anguished face.

“Oh, my son.” She said, watching his mouth pull and his eyes water, his shoulders shaking with the strain of his burden, the weight of his loss, the terror that perhaps this was his fault. He should have been here for the Odinsleep, or he shouldn’t have fought his brother, or he shouldn’t have destroyed the Bifrost, or-

She took him into her arms, allowing his head to fall upon her shoulder, and she rocked him minutely from side to side. She closed her eyes, cleared her mind, and refused to focus on anything but her eldest’s heaving breaths, the boy needlessly trying to contain his sobs.

“I could have-” He tried to say. “I should have been able to save- I didn’t  _listen_  to him, mother. This is because of  _me_.”

She shook her head, shushing him, looking him straight in the eye and hoping her smile was soothing and not as broken as it felt. “No, my boy. Not you. Not at all. You are not to blame for any of this.” And he wasn’t. He had done as he saw fit. He acted more than valiantly - more nobly than she’d ever expected of him, if she were to be true.

“He’s gone.” Thor managed, and Frigga nodded, sadly, the crushing load of the truth heavier inside than she allowed to show. Her son should never be brave for her when she was strong enough to be brave for him. She would do anything to lessen his burdens, even if it meant hurting herself irreparably instead.

“He’s gone.” She repeated, wiping away a stray tear from Thor’s cheek, gripping the hand that clung tightly to hers.

She moved aside, away from the entrance, and put the hand she had spare upon the boy’s back. He knew what she meant: not just that he should take a few moments to grieve in private, but also that she had words to say to his father that she did not wish him to hear. Before he disappeared through the great doors he looked back to where she watching him and he seemed so impossibly young. A lost, wide-eyed child once more, reminding Frigga sharply of the fact she was one short.

Once he had disappeared, it was more than that unbearable sadness which was keeping her steady. She looked again to her husband and he was exactly where she had left him, frozen part way up the steps, awaiting her permission to speak. He was at her whim now, despite the fact he was the king of the realm, and Frigga was more than aware of the power she held over her king.

“Of all the things to say, All-Father,” She said, her throat too tight and her voice only just stable. “You decide to take the ones which are so easily misconstrued. You knew he was fragile.” She was accusative now. Her grief was making her angry, her maternal loss making her dangerous towards the one who had taken her boy away from her - the man who had given him her in the first place. She saw now that same bloodied soldier, but he no longer carried the mercy which had inclined him to bring home an innocent in the first place. If he had, he wouldn’t have denied his son when he was balancing on a knife’s edge. Dangling on the end of a rope. If Odin had mercy, he would have saved him instead of watch him disappear forever.

“Frigga,” Odin tried to speak, but she held up a hand again and looked away. Finally her expression cracked, watching again as she did at the distant stars, and her lip trembled as she took a step backwards.

“You, who are so wise,” She started, choking upon the words. She forced herself to keep as calm as she could manage, lest she start screaming murder for all of Asgard to hear. “Could not even see his desperation? Could not have tried to be less cutting with your tongue when he was so far gone?”

“I could not have stopped him,” Odin protested. “He needed to see that what he had done was-“

“What?” Frigga snapped. “Precisely what you did to the Frost Giants a thousand years ago? We were going to war and he wished to protect us all.” She stopped him from speaking for a third and final time, taking another few steps back, knowing Odin would not follow. Not when she saw herself the guilt writ about his features - the same guilt which was now urgently trying to grasp at whatever reasoning he could conjure up which would not put him at fault in this. Frigga was not cruel enough to deny him of that, though she wished for Loki’s sake that she was. The bleeding part of her wanted nothing more than revenge for her lost son, but she could not when she watched her husband look to the ground as if seeking the answers in the polished steps. Perhaps he could see his own reflection and the patch where was once an eye; a reminder of the day he found Loki in a Jötun temple and one that would now forever haunt him.

No, she would not further his own suffering, but nor would she move to ease it. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.

She would go to her eldest instead, but as she moved inside the palace, leaving her husband behind, she changed her mind. Thor’s pain manifested into fury, and that fury lashed out. His agony would work itself out of him, physically draining him until his exhaustion got the better of him, and then he would slip into uneasy sleep. Tomorrow he would feel calmer. No less upset, but more capable of dealing with his emotions. She would pacify his sorrow then.

For now she slipped instead into another room, decorated with rich greens and the ever-present golden glow of Asgard, sitting on the bed of her youngest and stroking the fur of the blanket he had never needed, not even in the dead of the winter. The doors to the balcony gaped open, and outside was a view of the now cracked and smoking Bifrost. She closed them instead of looking out once again in an attempt to see him somewhere in the endlessness of space, drawing the curtains and lighting the candles at his desk.

Upon the tabletop were his tools of alchemy, bowls and knives and a few neatly stacked books concerning potions. His ingredients were organised in a nearby cupboard, orderly and neat and locked so people like Thor, with a revenge prank in mind, could not easily get to it without showing signs of entering. To remember such things made Frigga sick to her stomach, yet she could hardly bear to forget.

Besides the desk was an extensive bookshelf which housed tomes and scrolls on all a range of subjects - Loki’s mind was sharp and flexible, forever seeking out new information on everything and indeed anything to keep himself occupied. The battles and training which his brother and most of the Æsir delighted in only went so far to amuse Frigga’s brilliant boy, and although it dismayed many, she was always glad to see that Loki was an academic before a warrior, though oftentimes he was a mischief maker before an academic.

Her hand ghosted along the spines of the books he so caringly adored, and she pulled one off the shelf slowly, as if not to disturb the others. Loki would not have appreciated her looking into his business - many of these books were highly annotated with Loki’s spiked short-hand - but now it did not matter. Perhaps within these intimidating volumes was the answer to where the open portal he had fallen though had taken him. Perhaps these star charts and delicately painted maps of the universe would tell her where she could reach out to him to pull him back.

Or perhaps he was with his daughter.

Closing the book she nimbly placed it in the exact same place she took it from, knowing even if there were answers somewhere within these books she would never find it. She had not the same careless ease with magic as Loki had, or even the raw power of her husband, and nor could she always even interpret what the language of magic truly said, never mind what it would cost her to wield it to return so great a prize. It’d perhaps want something back that she would not know she’d have to pay, and it’d take it’s payment from her son instead and she’d lose him all over again.

If he was even alive. She could not see him even with her great reach, and nor could Odin. Though she doubted Heimdall would keep any news of Loki to himself should he catch wind of something his king and queen not glimpse, she would not go now to ask him when they were both so raw for two different reasons. She feared what she’d do to him should she confront him and see contempt in his eyes when she asked after her son.

She consoled herself with the thought that if he were with Hel, then he was safe. She would look after him.

Frigga straightened the indent she’d left on the bed, erasing all evidence she’d been there, and firmly pulled closed the door. She wondered what Odin would tell the people and how they’d react. She wished she could divorce herself from her responsibilities for just a few days. She wished she could act like something less than a queen so she could mourn for her child in privacy, and not have to pretend she was stronger than what she was. Her son was not a figure well liked in this moment, and not one which had ever been greatly loved. She couldn’t imagine many would be aggrieved by the news. 

She touched the door she’d never open again and here took her final moment to lament. Her chest heaved with the wretched sobs she could no longer keep contained, and her head bowed to floor. She stood there for as long as she could until her knees shook and sent her to the ground where she hid her face in her hands and wished hopelessly for him back. Inside her mind she was screaming to ancestors in Valhalla to hear her pain, but outside she could only weep for the son she would never again set eyes upon.

Eventually she stood, cried dry and hollow, and she moved steadily down the hall. She passed a room from which emitted great crashes and mournful howls, Thor’s chambers, and moved along silently. She would not disturb his time to destroy as she would not wish her time to cry interrupted. She led herself away to where she would find her husband. There, she would talk to him about what they were going to do next, and they would pretend, starting then and continuing on until forever, that Odin was not at fault for this great hole in their family.

She found him alone in the grand hall, sitting not on the throne but on the steps besides it. She wondered if she knew how adept a king Loki had proven himself to be, despite a few less than honourable actions he had deemed necessary in their increasingly dire situation.

She asked him exactly what he planned to do; what was their next action to be? When he suggested a feast to celebrate the end of a war, she could have murdered him where he sat.

She proved not to resort to mariticide, however, and put on a front. She had to pretend after all. The sooner she started, the quicker it’d fall into habit. The sooner she made-believe that her husband was not to blame for her son’s death, the sooner she might forget that she ever thought he was.


End file.
